Articles Tagged with“driving and texting”

A new study revealed that 92% of motorists use their phone while operating their vehicle. That reality must sink in. Whether you are in traffic, stopped at a red light, making 60mph on the highway, a pedestrian walking across an intersection, a bicyclist on a Sunday morning run, or in an Uber, understand that you are simply 100% at risk of injury. More and more, motorists see being in a moving car as being in a moving elevator: an opportunity to check emails, respond to texts, send a snap, read a story on Facebook, take a selfie to post on Instagram. The obvious difference is one is potentially deadly. This reality will remain true until we all operate self-driving vehicles.

For the last time, Floridians are undeniably on notice: Florida is the second-worst state for distracted driving. The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles’ statistics show that a distracted driving-related accident will occur every 10-12 minutes in Florida. That adds up to almost 50,000 crashes involving distracted-driving, and the consequences are life-altering, causing 3,500 catastrophic injuries and 233 deaths in 2016.

In the better part of the last decade, the legislator has failed to come to an agreement on a law that would ban texting while driving and pass a law to finally deter and reduce the number of distracted drivers who travel through the populous and dangerous roads of Florida. Today, very little can derail this bill to become law. It only awaits a signature by Florida Governor Rick Scott, which should officially occur in the next few weeks.

As discussed in our previously-mentioned post, informed proponents of a ban on texting while driving have openly criticized the future law in that it does not go far enough. The main point of criticism is that the Florida legislature has voted to make any violation of the texting ban a secondary offense, or a toothless bite.

Texting and driving has been and continues to be one of the leading causes of fatal car accidents in the State of Florida. Easily explaining the reasons for the situation is the ever standstill of the Florida legislator on this issue. For several years Ira Leesfield and the personal injury lawyers at Leesfield Scolaro have argued in favor of, and pushed legislators to pass a ban on texting while driving. Last week, despite a House and Senate either ignoring the reality of distracted driving, or incapable of coming to a sensible piece of legislation, a Broward County Judge allowed punitive damages in a civil negligence lawsuit for the first time in the State of Florida.

We have reported multiple times in the Florida Injury Lawyer Blawg the calamitous reality in Florida. As explained in our recent post “Florida still refuses to ban texting while driving“, Florida remains one of only six states without any limitations on cell phone use while driving. Every other State has either a total ban or a partial ban on texting and driving.

Over the years, Ira Leesfield has been a spokesperson for greater safety and common sense in the law. His experience fighting for the rights of innocent victims injured by the negligence of others has flourished in the passage of many important laws during his career as a personal injury attorney in Miami, Key West, throughout the State of Florida and the rest of the nation.